I went to Amoeba Music in Berkeley with
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Living in the same place for a year has made me antsy.  It's harder to move in Brooklyn than it is in Greensboro, where applications are intense processes and everyone wants first-month-last-month-deposit-down.  I love my house on Hope Street, I love my sapphire-colored comforter and days in the immediate shadow of the bridge, but the rest of my ( Read more... )

I have homes on the mind, as usual.  Raleigh and I have reconciled.  I have often seen that city as incidental to my growing up, as in, all the events could have been set in anyplace in the world without regard to scenery.  Half the time I imagined myself on the Oklahoma plain I knew only from a car window, eight hours of flatness.  No one believes ( Read more... )

I want every day to be like yesterday; the perfect New York day.

Parents are in town. Had omelets-and-mimosas brunch at Nolita House, then spent all afternoon at the mammoth Russia! exhibit at the Guggenheim. A whole roomful of Kandinskys, the ones with bubbles and pastel colors. Cool, crisp autumn weather. I wore a sweater and blazer. After ( Read more... )

New Orleans was the closest thing I have had to a tropical vacation.  Also, it was the first trip I have ever taken while being so completely poor.  Even in Europe, I'd been able to save money beforehand so that I could do things like go to Pamplona on a whim or haggle for scarves at the outdoor market.  This time, I was filching apples and bagels ( Read more... )

New York is a new city every day. There are neighborhoods within neighborhoods. Curry Hill is a mere two blocks containing at least sixteen different Indian restaurants. Little Brazil is a sliver of a side street tucked inside the ever-sprawling Times Square. The Chess District is just two stores staring angrily at each other from opposite sides of ( Read more... )

There are two men in my life right now: one who won't commit to me, and one who can't let me commit to him.  I learned a painful thing from the two Georges, that one half plus one half equals nothing.  I can't make them into one man, synthesizing their antonyms (film/television, serious/cordial, raw/proper) any more than I can make myself two women ( Read more... )

There have been some great moments in this embryonic year, the most vivid of which was in the West Village, taking part in that New York ritual of Sunday brunch: tea, pain au chocolat, and the New York Times Book Review section. Curling up on my bed with Erin, watching an SVU marathon and reflecting on four years (and counting) worth of friendship ( Read more... )

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I love all the songs that I sing in my head as I walk around the city.  Kathryn and I went to see the Macy's Parade balloons get blown up.  The Upper West side in autumn, hot cocoa, a new friend.  "My life isn't glamorous just because I live in New York," I insist on the phone to ( Read more... )

At some point last night- maybe it was being annoyed by those tourists in Times Square, or finding the subway by instinct- but I had this realization that I live here.  No, I haven't conquered it like Greensboro, but that city took me two years of wrestling to get to the esconced state.  Conquering would mean that something was over, that a goal ( Read more... )